Hey fellow athiests,

I look at all of the posts here in religions, where people are reading all KINDS of things into scriptures...and I gotta say, I'm sorry for them. The scriptures were written thousands of years ago, and people continue to read into them to suit their needs.

I've wanted to say this for a long time....

Especially when I see an athlete at the Olympics "thank God" for their victory...or at the Academy Awards...or Emmy's...it makes me ill. Their own talent got them there darn it!

If it takes a belief in a higher power to make one excel, fine...but I am a firm believer in that what accomplishments one does, they do THEMSELVES, not because of any God. I guess if they felt compelled to do better to sate their God, it's not a bad thing if it makes them feel good.

I just feel that whatever we do, we do OURSELVES...accomplishmemts as well as failings...I'm not willing to blame anyone but myself if I fail.

I've never felt a "higher power" had anything to do with my decisions.

As you know, I am no fellow atheist. I agree that there are speculators around here, who interpret scriptures and create mess after mess in so doing. Wicked imaginations, little insight from God. . . .

As for we acting by ourselves, when have you tried to stop thinking? You can't ever do that, because God and His angels are leading you. What few realize is that God will lead you into ignorance as surely as He will lead you into wisdom, if this accomplishes that part of His plan which includes you. God is as clever as He is wise.

Since you like yourself and your decisions so much, it sounds as though God intervened in your thought life just enough to trick you into your present state of vanity and conceit. I mean that since you continue to think and even boast that you do not need Him, He must be having a great time snickering while all is well with you. I wonder how you will cope when He pulls out of your thinking and your life takes a nosedive. Pride goeth before a fall, which is why I prefer to try to remain humble. As for those who thank God when it does appear that their talents have aided them, at least they are wise enough to remember to show some humility . . . because they fear the Lord lest He drop thoughts damaging to them into their heads or fail to correct thoughts damaging to them already in their heads.

I hope these remarks are spicy enough for you.

The situation I think is pathetic is one in which, say, a child's life has been saved by successful teamwork in an infrastructure completely created by human science and social co-operation:

- the lifeguard who noticed she had not come up after her last dive

- the ambulance crew who kept her breathing as she was rushed to hospital

- doctors and nurses who quickly cleaned up the bleeding in her skull caused by a bump, and later assessed her and reported to her parents that her function was normal,

and then you see the parents, interviewed by the press, thanking their god for her recovery! If it had been left to her god she would be dead.

Then the parents would be piously saying that god wanted her with him in heaven.

But in actual fact, religion has stood in the way of scientific (including medical) progress and is still doing so.

quote:

...when have you tried to stop thinking? You can't ever do that...

It depends what you mean by 'thinking', of course, but can't meditation be an example of stopping thinking?

I can understand an athlete or movie star thanking a god, gods or whatever. After all, it wasn't their own talent that got them there, but accidents of birth and upbringing, the efforts of many others, chance... and so on. Their talent certainly helped, but if they want to express a little humility and appreciation by saying 'thank god', fair enough.

While I can understand an actor or athlete thanking God for whatever award s/he is receiving, it does pain me a little. I feel sad for the real people who tutored, helped, coached, and otherwise contributed to the accolade, having their effort minimized. It's difficult to sweat blood and tears to bring this musclebound imbecile to this stage of accomplishment, only to have a mythical being given all the credit.

I'm happy though, to see the atheist forum resurrected after an interminable Western Religion thread of feuding "scripture snippets". It is hard to resist voicing disagreement with what insults one's intelligence, but it becomes impossible when the argument is conducted entirely in archaic gibberish. Some theists at least, like Tsaeb, speak the same language as their adversaries.

quote:

Originally posted by frankvan:
While I can understand an actor or athlete thanking God for whatever award s/he is receiving, it does pain me a little. I feel sad for the real people who tutored, helped, coached, and otherwise contributed to the accolade, having their effort minimized.

And what of the people who finished unplaced or never reached the qualifying mark? Do they thank God for that? If not, why not?

I'm sure they still thank God Fred, for being able to compete.

My point here is..I know that I'M making my own decisions, and no, God is not snickering at me, because there isn't one God looking over all of us.

We are here because we evolved, were NOT created all at once from the whim of a God.

And yes, I'm the first to say everyone is entitled to their own beliefs...but if I accomplish something it's because I did, it, not because I had divine intervention.

frankvan: It is a good thing that I do not get a swollen head from your sarcastic compliments, because I would have difficulty laughing at your hilarious remarks. You are right that I do not nitpick and drag through the mud others of differing views every time I post a dissenting opinion. Maybe sometimes, especially when someone is so assininny.

Giz, I’ll admit it bothers me when athletes and actors and whatnot thank their higher power when obviously it was their own talent, their parents’ support, their trainers’ coaching, their sponsors’ money (etc. etc. etc.) that really made it possible. I don’t have a problem with them believing their god had a hand in it but, as Frankvan points out, it does seem to detract from the actual. Tangible beings who helped them along the way.

I’ll admit, though, I’ve never heard the loser of a match blame their god for that. It seems our faults are our own (despite being apparently unable to think for ourselves without interference from a “clever” yet “tricking” god who leads us into ignorance?), but any successes we have are solely because of our creator and not due to any effort on our part.

Let me start by admitting that I'm a bit of a reality television nut.

That said, I can't stand it when people invoke God to help them. "Please God, Help me win this." It is so odd to me that people would think a reality show competition is worthy of God's attention when children of the world are starving and people are being killed by horrendous accidents. What kind of God is going to help them rapel down a mountain when that same God doesn't help the kids in Jamaica not lose their parents in flood waters?

There is a particularly religious person on Big Brother at the moment (actually two of them) and the moment last night was hilarious. "I knew the answer was 7 but I felt like God was telling me that it was 6. So I changed my answer and got it wrong." And she rationalized this with something along the lines of "God does everything for a reason so I guess I wasn't supposed to win that competition."

DUH.

It's very confusing what people think God is out there doing for them.

AND I always snickered at Sammy Sosa over the years because it seems that each year he'd play, he'd start pumping his chest and pointing to the sky more and more times each time he hit a home run. He started his career with one pump and one point and by the end of his run with the Cubs he was practically beating himself up for God.

It's a crazy world out there.

Did any of you catch John Edwards, one of the Democratic Presidential candidates, answer that he doesn't believe that God always answers prayer, because he prayed for his wife's cancer, and she has it back again?

People pray that things go their way, but they should be praying that they go God's way and that if they cannot hack it, then He should give them the qualities to obey Him. It is even better if they would agree with Him to go with His will instead of asking Him to gimme, gimme, gimme all of the time. Lots of praying folks do not even take the time out to thank Him for what He grants, and praising Him is even rarer. Those who thank God on TV are trying to give God the glory lest He withhold their future rewards until they learn or relearn submission to Him.

Here is the question and answer as it actually reads:

"STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me move on now. We've got a question -- we've got an e-mail question from Seth Ford of South Jordan, Utah.

And he said, "My question is to understand each candidates' view of a personal God. Do they believe that, through the power of prayer, disasters like Hurricane Katrina or the Minnesota bridge collapse could have been prevented or lessened?"

EDWARDS: I have prayed most of my life; pray daily now. He's enormously important to me.

But the answer to the question is: No, I don't -- I prayed before my 16-year-old son died; I prayed before Elizabeth was diagnosed with cancer. I think there are some things that are beyond our control.

And I think it is enormously important to look to God -- and, in my case, Christ -- for guidance and for wisdom. But I don't think you can prevent bad things from happening through prayer. "


And for good measure here is Obama's response:

"We don't have the power to prevent illness in all cases, but we do have the power to make sure that every child gets a regular checkup and isn't going to the emergency room for treatable illnesses like asthma.

We may not have the power to prevent a hurricane, but we do have the power to make sure that the levees are properly reinforced and we've got a sound emergency plan.

And so, part of what I pray for is the strength and the wisdom to be able to act on those things that I can control. And that's what I think has been lacking sometimes in our government."

aminator2002: Thanks for the clarification. I was too surprised to get those answers as well as they were stated. I liked Obama's last sentence the best.

quote:

While I can understand an actor or athlete thanking God for whatever award s/he is receiving, it does pain me a little. I feel sad for the real people who tutored, helped, coached, and otherwise contributed to the accolade, having their effort minimized.

Frank, I've never heard one yet that didn't thank all of them. They probably thanked God first because they felt he was the head of their life. They certainly don't leave anyone out.

Seriously, have you ever heard them thank 'only' God?

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Originally posted by honilov: Seriously, have you ever heard them thank 'only' God?

I have.

Actually so have I. It was a parent, on the news, who said "All thanks be to god alone, for he is great," or words to that effect, after her child had been saved by a medical team after a road accident. At least that time the team was not in the background.

Which made their efforts entirely useless, it seems.

Where was god when people died in their millions from smallpox and black death epidemics, and now very few die of them? Were people wickeder then, and needed more punishment?

quote:

Originally posted by babthrower:

Where was god when people died in their millions from smallpox and black death epidemics, and now very few die of them? Were people wickeder then, and needed more punishment?

Yes, as I've pointed out before, His Son was strong on teaching ethics and morality but, to prove his divine parentage, also did some medicine. Unfortunately his cures were always miracles, wrought on touching the patient or simply addressing him or her, and never by chemistry or any other means which the rest of the crowd could copy. So God kept the cure a secret.If you happened to be his son you could cure the condition but not otherwise.The secret of curing sick people through the agency of ordinary mortals was denied to all until some people, often non-Christian, found the answers hundreds of years later. Whilst these worthies were working on the problems, the churches were full of devout, distressed people praying for the recovery of their sick relatives,all to no effect. Now devout people pray just the same but their prayers may be fewer, because the number of people who might die from any condition is less, and the prayers are more often 'answered' because the doctors are better at saving the lives of the seriously ill or critically injured. Nonetheless, and in spite of this obvious fact, the devout will still thank God for any recovery.Surprisingly, peoples who are not Christian, people who don't pray, atheists, primitive tribes and all the rest, also get cured and survive provided they have access to medical science and practice . Somehow the lack of that element proves fatal in devout communities of any religion but its presence preserves life whatever the beliefs, or atheism, of those affected.

"So God kept the cure a secret.If you happened to be his son you could cure the condition but not otherwise."

Nonsense. All you have to do is squeeze your eyes shut really hard, make a face like you're in serious intestinal distress, name the affliction (or anything close*), and say "Amen" after you're done. (For best results, say "Amen and AMEN.") You don't even have to be close to the patient; he or she can be hundreds of miles away. It works for Pat Robertson every week.



* I've seem him cure a bad knee with "I see someone who a leg problem; maybe it's the right leg. God is healing you right now as we speak." (So what if it was the left knee. He was close.)

quote:

Where was god when people died in their millions from smallpox and black death epidemics, and now very few die of them? Were people wickeder then, and needed more punishment?

Actually, everyone was born to die and people will die in different ways, whether easy or suffering. When those people died from the epidemics, it was their appointed time to go. God knows from the day we are born what day, and how we are gonna die.

To you and Elexina, when people thank God only, I would think they do it because their faith in God puts him ahead of everyone, and that he was the reason that everyone else contributed.

Anyway, it really doesn't matter because faith in God is like a feeling, and you can't explain it to someone that has never experienced it.

Just like crack cocaine, I've never experienced it, and no one can explain to me the feel they get from it. I'm an atheist to crack. I don't believe in it, I have no faith in it.

I think the reason theists make sure they thank god while they may neglect their human helpers is that their god is terribly "human". Fail to pay the proper and sufficient praise and he is liable to get pissed off. You can fail to pay the surgeon or the hospital, but fail to pay the deity and WHAMMO! You can't afford to mess with the omnipotent one. We've all been whacked upside the head for being ingrates on occasion.